


Fallen from Grace

by aces



Category: ER
Genre: Episode Related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-16
Updated: 2010-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:49:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We're all the same underneath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallen from Grace

**Author's Note:**

> Various scenes taken from the ep "Surrender," and it's all about Carter. Mention's also made to the previous season's finale—sorry, don't know the title. I don't own 'em, I make no profit from this, and suing me would only be a waste of precious time and money. We've all got better things to do, don't you think?

He didn't want to be here.

He'd stalled all morning. Stalled in the shower, stalled at breakfast, stalled while getting dressed, stalled while driving. But he'd still ended up here. And he was walking down this empty, silent corridor, and it was reminding him of another empty, silent corridor he'd walked down in Atlanta little less than a year ago--

"Dr Samson doesn't work here anymore."

"What?" At that Carter looked up, all his own worries and thoughts for a moment gone from his mind.

"Dr _Miller_ treats your cousin now." The nurse sounded accusing.

Or perhaps he was just imagining things.

"Fine," John answered. "Call him." He wasn't about to let a nurse bully him around and make him feel guilty.

"Probably not necessary now that you're here."

"Why's that?" Carter was genuinely puzzled.

"I think he's just lonely."

_Aren't we all?_ "Can you get me a, uh, protein shake or something?" She nodded and left him alone.

He opened the door, his heart pounding in his ears. "Chase?" He stared down at his cousin, who didn't acknowledge him. Chase was in a sweatshirt, sweat pants. He looked older, different from what John remembered. John felt positively over-dressed next to him, standing in his long overcoat and somber dark suit. "It's John. Mind if I sit down?" He took off his coat, draping it over the back of the wheelchair, trying to keep himself occupied in the little things so he wouldn't get caught up in the big things. What he did every day, every minute of his life for this past year. Every time he thought about the drugs, the sweet high he could get if only he took the drugs. But that wasn't an option anymore.

He sat down next to his cousin, in the wheelchair. It'd been a long time since he sat in one of those. But he didn't want to think about that. That wasn't why he came here. He had to make his cousin understand. "Hey, I'm uh, sorry I haven't been around here very much. I've been busy."

At that, Chase deigned to answer his presence. "For a year?"

Carter felt something inside of him slump over and die in defeat. Maybe he couldn't back down in front of that nurse, but his cousin was an entirely different story. "You're right." He sighed. "You're right, it's not an excuse." _All I ever have are excuses. _He paused, latched onto the only good thing he could find at the moment. "Hey, your speech sounds good. You've been getting around much?"

"Nope," sighed his cousin.

John wanted to answer that, wanted to tell his cousin what he came here to say, but stopped. And then the nurse came back in with the shake. Good. Something he could deal with. He shook it up, tried to get his cousin to drink it. "You know you've got to eat something, Chase."

"No."

"Why not, what's the matter? Come on, just take a sip." This was something familiar, something he remembered from long ago. It was almost comforting, despite how much he'd used to despise his cousin's helplessness. He could still care for his cousin. He was still better than the other man. "Just a little sip."

"NO!" Chase pushed the shake away, pushed John away. The drink smashed to the floor, splattering everywhere.

John brushed off his slacks. He kept wanting to look at his cousin, really look at him, to stop just glancing at him quickly out of the corner of his eye, like a criminal unable to admit when he was lying. He couldn't do it, though. "Maybe later," he sighed quietly. Everything was beyond his control.

"Go away," Chase muttered.

John looked at his cousin.

_We're all the same underneath._

He couldn't believe that.

* * *

He couldn't believe it. She was letting him off easy. Yeah, he had to start over, but who cared? He could do it. He'd done it before, he could do it again. He was determined. That was all that mattered. Running down the hall, calling out orders, bringing Mark up to speed, signing his name to a chart, getting ready for the casualties--it was exhilarating. It made him feel alive; it was who he was, what he was here to do, to save lives. It was moments like this, like working on a patient, that made him forget, just for an instant, that he couldn't get high, that the drugs weren't an option anymore.

This was his life.

"All right, push some Versed," Benton said, struggling to hold the patient down.

His words sunk in. "What?"

"The Versed! Right there on the stand, come on."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

_Where the hell IS everybody?! There should be at least a _nurse_ in here!_ "I'm not allowed to."

"Carter, push the damned Versed; I can't get this tube into him! Carter--where are you going?!"

"Hold _on_!" Carter yelled back, the anger pushing through his control, pushing through his voice, as he pushed his way out of the one room and into the other, ripping off his old gloves and putting on new ones. "Hey, Dave, go push some Versed for Benton, would you?" he asked Malucci quietly, praying the other man would just go and take care of it for him without asking questions.

It was definitely not his day. "I'm busy."

"I've got this. Go ahead," Carter tried to tell him, tried to take over for him.

"Carter, no," Dave muttered, annoyed, like a father telling his kid he was too busy to play now. But John was too afraid of having to spill everything, of having to give up all his secrets to everyone, to get annoyed at the way Dave was speaking to him. "Come on, man, just do it," John answered in the same lowered voice Dave had used, quietly trying to push him away.

"_You_ do it."

"Dave, go," Kerry butted in. Carter refused to feel relieved.

"What?!"

"Now!" The famous Kerry Weaver yell. "Help Benton." She glanced up at Carter but he refused to meet her eye, just like he refused to meet Dave's confused eye. He fell into the case, the medical jargon, quickly. He was saved. That was what mattered. It would work out. None of this was his fault.

Only now Benton was pissed, chewing him out for not disobeying orders. And Carter couldn't tell him, couldn't tell him the real reason why he couldn't push the narcotics, that he'd slipped up, even though it wasn't his fault. _So many secrets. I thought when you got clean you got rid of the secrets. No more hiding. So why do I have more now than I did?_

He couldn't let Benton talk to Kerry. Peter would figure it out, he always did. Eventually. When you least wanted him to. "It's my problem," he told Benton by the elevator, pleading with Peter. _It's always been my problem. I can handle it. I'm still in control. None of this is my fault._

"No Carter," Peter told him. "It's everybody's problem."

"Look, just don't talk to Weaver," Carter begged, hating himself to have to do this. "Please?" But the elevator doors were already closing.

He knew he was screwed. And when he saw Benton yelling at Kerry later on, he knew, _knew_, Benton would figure out what happened.

He had to talk to the other man.

He got his chance, just as he was leaving, and Benton was in the lounge, looking at piles of papers, separating them into neat stacks. "Hey," Carter said, heading for his locker. The very silence was oppressive. It filled him with dread. "Days like today, you look down at your watch, and suddenly your shift is over." He knew it was lame as soon as he said it, but he couldn't help it. He had to say _some_thing. Had to get it started.

Had to know.

"I'm busy, Carter," Peter said at last, tired of their stilted conversation about med school applications, in that tone of voice and with that "I'm too busy for _you_" air that Carter knew too well from years ago. The look in the surgeon's eyes. He knew for certain now that Benton had found out.

"You talk to Weaver?" He didn't know why he asked, since he already knew. But maybe he just had to make absolutely certain.

"Yep." The single word told him everything.

"It was nothing," Carter told him, suddenly _needing_ to get away from that disappointed, accusing silence. The empty, silent corridors all over again. Chase's room all over again. "It was a slip--not even a slip--nothing. I threw them up." It was just like his internship again, and he was justifying himself again, making excuses again, and it was his intervention again, with all of them staring at him as if they didn't know him anymore, as if he were less than he had been, and he was trapped again, and he was punching Benton in the nose again--

He _had_ to talk to Chase. Make him understand. He had to make _some_one understand. So he found himself picking up some fast food, heading back down the empty, silent corridor to Chase's room.

"Go away," were the first words out of Chase's mouth.

Not the best beginning. But John couldn't back down now, couldn't change his mind now. He found himself angry, at his cousin, at Chase, for not being sympathetic. For not understanding.

"There's a reason I didn't come to see you, Chase," he began. "I wanted to come see you but I didn't and I didn't, because I was afraid. I was afraid because I didn't want to ad--" He stopped, unable to say the words. He couldn't force the words out.

So he tried again. He was still in control. He still knew what he was doing. He was still better than Chase. It wasn't his fault. He kept reminding himself of that. "When I got stabbed last year at work, a friend of mine got killed, and I, uhm," he was horrified to hear his voice breaking, "ended up addicted to painkillers. And it caught up to me. And I started to, uh, shoot morphine and Demerol and Phentonol and whatever else I could get my hands on. And I don't know what would have happened if I didn't get busted, but I did, and I went to rehab--but I wasn't like any of those people," he added in defense of himself. He had to make Chase understand. It really hadn't been his fault. "I got into this because of an injury, because of circumstance--because of a near-death experience." _I'm different. I'm better than that. _"Anyway, it wasn't me--I mean, it was me, but it wasn't--anyway." He realized he was pouring everything out, the entire past year of his life, babbling like an idiot, and he'd lost control of where this speech was heading. His thoughts were spiraling out of his control even as he spoke, his words spiraling out of his control, his feet wandering haphazardly, but he was driven, driven, _driven_ to get the words out, make them said, make sure someone heard and understood--it wasn't about Chase now, it was about him, John Carter--because he'd never said this to anyone, never properly, not even to himself.

He had to get the words out. Make someone understand.

"I did the program," he said. "I pretended that I bought into it. I did everything I was supposed to do. Except believe that I had anything to do with what had happened, and then...I almost relapsed. Or, I guess...I guess I did relapse," he frowned in slow realization. He really _could_ finally say what he'd come to say that morning, this evening. He looked up and stared at the back of his cousin's head. "Anyway. I didn't come to see you, Chase, because I didn't want to admit the fact...that I was just like you." _We're all the same underneath._ He could finally say it all now. It was a relief to admit it at last, to get rid of his secrets. "The fact--the truth is, there's not a day goes by I don't think about getting high. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and it's the last thing I think about before I go to bed at night." The words had a rhythm, an almost musical quality as he said them, as they fell out of his mouth. As he let them go. He'd never admitted this to anyone, not even Abby. "And I think about it all day."

He paused, his face working, trying to form the words. The really important words. _I'm no better than you, Chase. We're all the same underneath._

"I'm a drug addict."

And he could feel the tears springing into his eyes, and he waited for Chase to say something, because he'd just poured his whole heart out, and he'd just realized that it really was his problem, that it _was _him, and that he could solve it. He'd finally made someone understand.

"Uhh..." Chase seemed to wake himself up, moving his head. John looked up, waiting expectantly to hear what his cousin would say. "Did you bring any French fries?"

John paused, laughed, wiped his face, and he coughed, clearing his throat. He tossed the bag at his cousin.

He had laughed.

And it had been a sound of relief.


End file.
